Social networking systems in teaching/learning English for specific purposes

Abstract

The greatest achievement of technology, the Internet, not only changed the lifestyles of the world population, but also created unheard of before opportunities for learning and teaching foreign languages. The development of technology provided the important shift from the informational Web 1.0 to the social Web 2.0, which allows involving users in active communication and collaboration with each other. The number of social media websites keeps constantly increasing, which makes them available to learners all over the world. This article aims at examining use of social media websites by the university students who study English for Law and Customs Activities. The current research data are compared with the results obtained by A. Paciuk (2012) with the students of the same specialization. Some similarities and statistical correlations between the findings for ‘often used’ sites have been found, but results differ significantly for ‘sometimes used’ or ‘never used’ sites.